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River City Ransom (Nintendo Entertainment System, 1989)

$222.99

About this product

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Ah, high school -- host to wedgies, bad food, acne and social politics. Unfortunately, these are the least of the worries on Alex and Ryan's minds, as the meanest gang lord in River City is holding their entire high school hostage - including Ryan's girlfriend! "With my gangs of students and vicious bosses roaming the streets, no one can stop me now. Meet my demands -- or else!" wrote Slick. It was this "or else!" that especially struck fear into the hearts of the River City citizens, in addition to confusion as to what his demands were.

Confused and helpless to do anything about the situation, the River City population is relying upon Alex and Ryan to put an end to Slick's reign of terror. But to take down Slick and rescue Cyndy, Alex and Ryan will have to fight their way through the rough, gang-filled streets of River City between them and River City High School using their fists, feet and whatever blunt instruments they happen to find along the way.

Selecting from Alex or Ryan in one-player mode, or both in two-player mode, you're armed with a plethora of attacks and moves to flatten your foes, ranging from the basic punches, kicks, jumps, and sprinting, to jump kicks, sprinting jumps, tag-team maneuvers, and wielding or throwing weapons and enemies. In addition, environments you'll journey through are filled with ways to pound your foes; you can rebound off walls and let loose with a flying kick, climb atop walls, benches and other structures to put the drop on your enemies, or even knock them into a pit.

A multitude of weapons and objects can be found along the streets or acquired by smacking them out of the hands of foes, including lead pipes, wooden two-by-fours and metal chains you can swing or throw, brass knuckles and rocks adding a little more power to a punch, and trash cans, wooden crates and tires, which can be tossed or stood upon. Weapons may even be used against other weapons; swinging a lead pipe at a rock will whack it back towards the sender.

It's a good thing you have all of this at your disposal, because over nine gangs are standing in your way, including lower level thugs such as Harry, Larry, Terry, Perry, Jerry, Cary, Gary and Ralph of the Generic Dudes, to the big boys from The Plague, The Zombies and The Cowboys. Each gang has a mean boss such as Thor or Rocko and each guard their home turf, ranging from Sticksville and Armstrong Thru-Way to the WSL Co. Warehouse and finally, River City High School, doing everything they can to prevent you from passing through.

Defeating your enemies is where role-playing elements come into play; gang members drop money in the form of coins, which you may collect and use to purchase food and items from malls and shopping plazas located throughout River City. Each mall or shopping area contains a variety of sushi bars, bookstores, coffee shops and fast food joints. You can choose to eat-in at restaurants or snag some grub for replacing your energy on the road, while bookstores or shoe stores allow you to purchase items raising your attributes and teaching you new techniques.

Techniques such as Stone Hands or Dragon Feet speed up your attacks to pummel your foes at an accelerated rate, while Acro Circus allows you to perform a spinning jump, allowing you to leap over and trounce foes more easily. Attributes include your agility, defense, will power, strength, throwing ability, punching and kicking strengths, proficiency at wielding weapons, and stamina, in addition to your remaining hit points.

Alex and Ryan each possess a bar of health and when this reaches zero from one hundred percent, they'll be knocked unconscious by their foe, then awaken at the last mall or shopping center they visited, money stolen by the miscreant. River City Ransom utilizes a password based save system. A password may be retrieved at any time through the submenu, allowing you to return to the fray later with your attributes, items and

Most relevant reviews

I used to play a version of this game on PC where you could create own graphics for the facial expessions of your character. We had great fun with that me and a friend.
You start out running around (either alone or two player coop) and kicking ass outta school kids. They got fancy dress codes in japan, so everyone got their neat suits.
Anyways, you run around from left to right and kids appear and want to beat your ass. When taking them down with either a kick or a bunch, they drop coins. Sometimes they even attack you with weapons. You may pick these up and use at your disposal: A to slash, B to toss the item.
Anyways, the coins you collect can later on be used in shops to purchase things which can upgrade your character's powers. I'm not sure which attributes it was, but it's definatly health, defense and attack. So it's always a good idea to pick up every single coin the enemies drop.
This game is playable in both japanese and english versions as there's really no puzzles involved.
The music is addictive and definatly something you'll remember after you've played the game. Sound effects are great.
Definatly a game worth owning thanks to it's 2 player coop.Read full review

This game is a cult classic.
Some of us had friends who had this.
Spend days in the tv room playing this game.
It's about 40$ but one of the only Nintendo games that accepted a code as a save point.
Buy it.

This game started it all! Endless upgrades, Hilarious when you beat an enemy down. Key to this game is: eat to keep your health up, visit every sonna, Read every book you can (but note some books can over ride others causing you to loose abilities to gain others). Being able to punch faster and kick faster will help you the most in this game. Tap left or right twice to run. Avoid fights if health is low. You will loose money and time if you die. You can attack bosses more than once so keep this in mind for extra quick cash. You can pick up items and use them or throw them at enemies. Good luck hope this helps. Enjoy this game. I sure have. P.S. There is a hidden store in the tunnel. -Will

I grew up a nintendo geek but had never played this title. I had heard a ton of good stuff about this game recently and considering i've been on a nintendo kick recently i decided to try out river city ransom. Holy crap what a great game. Its has very well balance fighting mechanic. Some light humor and a level up system including the ability to purchase items in malls. Some of it kind of reminds me of Earthbound. Very pleasantly suprised by the quality of this game. Well worth the money i dropped on it.